Viral photo: Baby reaches out of womb to grab doctor’s hand

Nevaeh Atkins reaches out for a helping hand just before being born via C-section. (A Classic Pin-Up)

Meet 2013′s first, and tiniest, Internet star: Nevaeh Atkins.

During a routine C-section at a hospital in the Phoenix area, this baby girl reached out from her mother’s belly to grab the hand of the delivery doctor, Dr. Allan Sawyer.

Nevaeh’s remarkable handshake brought smiles to everyone in the operating room, including her dad, Randy Atkins, who was standing nearby with a camera on hand.

“The doctor called me over and said, ‘Hey, she’s grabbing my finger,’” Randy told KTVK-TV. “So I ran over there and just grabbed the shot and I was just in awe looking at it. It was such an amazing picture.”

While Neveah appears to be purposely reaching out to give the doctor a friendly handshake, her hand is gripping the finger as a result of the palmar grasp reflex, a primitive reflex that appears at birth and continues until five or six months. If you touch the palm of a newborn’s hand, its fingers will suddenly close.

Nevaeh’s mom, Alicia Atkins, delivered on October 9 but she and Randy initially kept the photo private because they thought people might be disgusted by an up-close image of a C-section. But as the couple slowly started sharing the image with friends and family, they realized that people found the photograph of Nevaeh (“heaven” spelled backwards) beautiful rather than offensive.

On the day after Christmas, Alicia posted the incredible image on the Facebook page of her her Glendale, Ariz., photography company, A Classic Pin-Up. It instantly went viral and caught the attention of KNXV-TV and other local media. The image was shared over 10,000 times on Facebook and has now appeared on news blogs throughout the world.

“It was such an amazing photo. [Hospital staff] had possibly heard of it happening but they had never seen a photo of it,” Atkins told KTVK-TV.